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Australian doctors get immediately suspended for Wrongthink, must publicly renounce unpermitted Association

Death by committee has a whole new meaning.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency

Australians believe that their doctors are independent, because we have public and private medical systems and lots of “competition” between medical groups that appear to be run like businesses. What they don’t realize is that the bureaucrats entirely own the profession and it’s a monopoly from end to end. There is the illusion of freedom, but AHPRA suspends anyone who “holds the wrong views”. Once suspended a doctor is not permitted to practice, to write scripts, sometimes they are not even allowed to contact their patients.

AHPRA is not sacking doctors for bad patient outcomes, patient complaints, fraud or high risk medicine. For all the world it appears that the worst thing a doctor can do is suggest cheap solutions that get in the way of Medical Profits.

The government forcibly takes the money to fund Medicare from Australians but doesn’t let them have any choice about using those funds to talk to the doctor they prefer — only approved clone doctors. It’s communist medicine.

If there was a free market, Australians could opt out of Medicare and fund their own doctors.

The AHPRA […]

Thursday Open Thread

9.7 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

A Kalibr Missile just hit Net Zero: Germany wakes old coal plants, UK talks of backflip on gas, oil, fracking too

It’s was the last chance to save The Planet, but nevermind?

Get ready for the Great Reenergize-ment, we’ve reached a tipping point. Even the elite believers know a real threat when they see one. The ruling class, sitting on cushy taxpayer salaries, weren’t threatened by higher fuel prices and carbon taxes, but Russian missiles are another thing. Only a few months ago we had only “ten years til the next mass extinction”. Now, everything coal is good again, and years of pompous energy policies are on fire.

In normal times these would be monster headline backflips with mass protests in the streets from fifteen-year-old school-skippers.

Hat tip to NetZeroWatch

Germany to fire up mothballed coal power stations

By Matt Oliver, The Telegraph

One of Europe’s biggest energy companies is preparing to bring a string of German coal power stations out of retirement as part of efforts to wean the country off Russian gas.

These include plants that have been decommissioned, those that are scheduled to go off-grid this year and others that are currently kept on standby.

Robert Habeck, Scholz’s economy minister, has insisted there will be “no taboos”, throwing into […]

Guest post by Rafe Champion. The Geopolitics of Energy

Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute has been sending warning signals for years that the push for intermittent energy in the west could have drastic geopolitical consequences. Here he explains how the conflict in the Ukraine has brought the drastic consequences upon us ahead of schedule.

Ukraine and the Great Energy Reset

Naivete about energy realities robbed the U.S. and its allies of important “soft power” options and helped finance Russia’s aggression. In the near term, our choices are limited, but continuing down the same energy path is a formula for yet more problems in the future.

The EU and the US over the past two decades spent more than $5 trillion and made countless mandates to replace oil, natural gas and coal. This brought the hydrocarbon share of all energy use down by two percentage points to 84 percent while burning wood still supplies more energy than all the world’s solar panels and oil still fuels nearly 97 percent of all the world’s transportation.

While the west spent a great deal of money to phase out coal and gas, without going nuclear, Russia and China pressed on to develop their coal and gas resources and nuclear […]

A win: Australian Federal Court tosses out high schoolers climate case

The good news is that the experts are very unhappy:

Today’s disappointing federal court decision undoes 20 years of climate litigation progress in Australia

The Conversation

The federal court today unanimously decided Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley does not have a duty of care to protect young people from the harms of climate change.

The ruling overturns a previous landmark win by eight high school students, who sought to stop Ley approving a coal mine expansion in New South Wales.

The bad news is that these same experts can’t see how profoundly silly their reasoning is:

So why was Ley successful? The federal court’s 282-page judgment offers myriad reasons for why no duty should be imposed on the minister. But what emerges most clearly is the court’s view that it’s not their place to set policies on climate change. Instead, they say, it’s the job of our elected representatives in the federal government.

Well, do we live in a democracy or don’t we?

If only Jacqueline Peel and Rebekkah Markey-Towler could persuade us that coal is a killer, they wouldn’t need to go to court to force their opinions on […]

Tuesday Open Thread

9.4 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Did volcanic dust from Hunga Tonga cause flooding in Australia?

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai

By Jo Nova

Unusual rain in Australia started within days of the Hunga Tonga dust cloud travelling across the continent

On January 15th, Hunga Tonga launched a magma-powered thunderstorm that sent atmospheric shockwaves around the world. Ash, salt and particulates were carried through rising columns, right through the stratosphere, into the mesosphere and all the way up to 58 kilometers above Earth. For hours 400,000-odd lighting bolts zapped the airborne chemical soup.

The dust from Hunga-Tonga travelled West and reached Australia on Jan 18 – 20th. On Jan 21-22 flooding rain washed out the main railway line and roads in central Australia. Over the next few weeks, rains soaked the ground across parts of Queensland and New South Wales. By February 15th, the remnant volcanic dust that had circled the Earth and was back again creating rich red sunsets over Australia. A week or so after that, the rain bombs fell on South East Queensland, and travelled south through New South Wales to Sydney.

The big unknown is that the Hunga-Tonga volcano launched water vapor, salt and dust incredibly high — almost too high. The aerosols are far above the troposphere where rainfall originates and […]

The Atlantic warns that Nuclear War is a climate problem (and you thought bombs were OK?)

Just in case people were thinking a few nuclear bombs don’t matter:

“…even a relatively “minor” exchange of nuclear weapons would wreck the planet’s climate in enormous and long-lasting ways.”

Despite sounding crazily disconnected from reality, Robinson Meyer is slightly less crazy than the cult people he’s trying to reach. Many “artists” and “climate concerned progressives” have leapt on the latest hot-fashion-in-activism (who could have seen that coming?) and they’re calling for a No Fly Zone over Ukraine. It’s like they believe that putting up a sign saying “Warplane Free” will stop the warplanes.

Meyer has figured out that a No Fly Zone might lead to World War III, and he’s trying warn the raptured throngs, that things might not work out so well. Naturally, he’s speaking in lingua-leftie. But how, exactly do you scare someone in a climate cult? Not with nuclear war, but with something catastro-double-awful-bad for the climate.

On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem

By Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic

Social media pundits are having a field day:

On the richter scale of climate porn, what’s the worst thing Meyer can […]

Coming to a civilization near you: The totalitarians wet dream — A Central Bank Digital Currency

Suddenly central bankers want to reach right into your wallet, follow you around, nudge your every decision, or just stop you spending your dollars less wisely than the average bureaucrat thinks you should. These are the same people who *know* you should be saving the Earth by eating crickets.

This is a great essay, part fiction, part nightmare, but already knocking on our doors. A Central Bank Digital Currency (or CBDC) is your digital ID card and social credit score wrapped into one and actioned with instant bank-freezing potential, honk, honk.

Imagine living off food-stamps.

Just Say No to CBDCs says N.S.Lyons

You wave your phone at the pump. Nothing happens. You try again. Your phone buzzes, and you look at it. There’s a message from the Fed: “You have already spent more than the $400 maximum weekly limit on fossil fuels specified in the FedWallet User Agreement. Your remaining account balance cannot be used to purchase non-renewable energy resources. Please make an alternative purchase. Have you considered a clean, affordable New Energy Vehicle? Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and sustainable world!”

You have in fact considered purchasing […]

Not informed, no consent: 1,200 people died in the first 3 months of Pfizer vax. Why was that data hidden?

When the unvaccinated die of Covid they get turned into advertising material for Pfizer. But when people died in the weeks after after getting the vaccines, the companies, the institutions and the media did their utmost to hide it.

A group of doctors and researchers wanted the 326,000 pages of FDA data used to approve the Pfizer vaccine, but neither the FDA or Pfizer would give it them. So the doctors put in an FOIA, and again the FDA hid the data, so the doctors sued the FDA for withholding it.

Serving Big-Pharma with all the funds they can get…

But when pressed they said they needed 55 years to redact out all the juicy bits so “people couldn’t cherry pick” or something like that. When pushed, the FDA told the judge they really needed 75 years to provide it. This was the same FDA that supposedly read all those 326,000 pages in detail in just 108 days in order to speedily approve the vaccine “with the utmost of care”.

The intrepid doctors group calls itself the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency or PHMPT. And they are finally getting somewhere. In January a Texas Judge ordered […]

Weekend Unthreaded

9.7 out of 10 based on 9 ratings

Guest Post by Rafe Champion: Soviet Sabotage of our Energy Supply

There is talk about Soviet funding for green groups to block shale gas fracking and coal mining. This is not a new thing.

[Indeed Jo wrote last week: Russian-linked groups donated to anti-frakking Green groups because they love the planet right?]

In case you were wondering why we have no nuclear power and why the sensible old-time conservation movement turned into a radical green monster, the late John Grover told the story in his book Struggle for Power (1980). This is a summary of the chapter on the birth of the anti-nuclear program under the guise of “respectable” consumer advocacy in the US and also the worldwide network of communist agencies and their fronts.

To summarize the summary:

In 1971 Ralph Nader, bankrolled by the Rockefeller network, began to work with the “Union of Concerned Scientists” to combine the efforts of environmental groups and public interest lawyers against nuclear power (NP). They worked on several fronts: Legal action to delay projects; Lobbying Congress and Government agencies; Propagandising the churches; Advertising directed at the general public.

Exaggerated dangers and innuendos of industry incompetence were widely accepted and the industry had no strategy to respond.

“To cut a long story […]

Surreal: Fake Russian claims of bioweapons labs, not so fake

Russia says the US has bioweapon research labs in Ukraine, an outrageous claim that was instantly fact-checked to oblivion until Senator Marco Rubio stopped the show by asking a US official under oath: Does Ukraine have chemical and biological weapons?

Victoria Nuland, US Under Secretary of State, could have said “No” but instead she said:

Ukraine has Biological research facilities… which in fact we are quite concerned about — that Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of. So we are working with Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into Russian hands should they approach…

So not only is there some kind of research going on, but it’s so safe and fine that the US is worried the Russians might get it. And despite the Russians queuing for days in tanks at the border, no one thought to secure or destroy it?

Then the US official who hid secret labs and worries about what the Russians will do tells everyone that

“It’s classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they are planning to do themselves…”



I’m not sure whether to hope the US secures […]

Evil or just greedy? Time to talk about The WEF

….

The World Economic Forum, was founded in 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab where he hit upon the winning idea of organizing a ski holiday for the worlds richest people, described as a management training session or something tax deductible. Like most of these conferences, once the richest of the rich were there, everyone else had to be as long as the riff-raff were kept out. The importance of it was almost certainly not the official speeches but the deals done over drinks-with-new-friends at the bar, or on the piste. It was a chance to meet with Moguls on the moguls.

The foundation is mostly funded by its 1,000 member companies, possibly in lieu of the taxes they don’t pay to their home countries. The 1,000 corporate members are all theoretically “$5 billion dollar entities”, except the ones that are $5 Trillion dollar entities, so they are kind of like the UN of the corporate world, with five times as many members and without the hanger-on-erers. (Fifty of the UN’s members would be too small to qualify). At best, the WEF is the ultimate corporate conference club, and at worst, a kind of quasi corporate […]

Guest Post by Rafe Champion: Famous last words?

Warwick McKibbin reckons Vladimir Putin might be the best thing that’s ever happened to the energy transition.

Speaking at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Tuesday, the economist, academic and former Reserve Bank board member argued that surging commodity prices caused by the war in Ukraine could force the urgent shift to clean energy to accelerate.

Really?

In the parallel universe Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute has been sending warning signals for years that the push for intermittent energy in the west could have drastic geopolitical consequences. Here he explains how the conflict in the Ukraine has brought the drastic consequences upon us ahead of schedule.

Naivete about energy realities robbed the U.S. and its allies of important “soft power” options and helped finance Russia’s aggression. In the near term, our choices are limited, but continuing down the same energy path is a formula for yet more problems in the future.

He notes that the EU and the US over the past two decades spent more than $5 trillion and made countless mandates to replace oil, natural gas and coal.

This brought the hydrocarbon share of all energy use down by two percentage points […]

Thursday Open Thread

8.7 out of 10 based on 10 ratings

Biden Sells Alaska Back To Russia So America Can Start Drilling For Oil There Again

The joke

Biden Sells Alaska Back To Russia So We Can Start Drilling For Oil There Again

 

Babylon Bee

ANCHORAGE, AK—The deliberate and premeditated invasion of Ukraine by brutal dictator Vladimir Putin has forced the US to reassess the importance of energy independence. With this new resolve, the Biden Administration has taken its first step toward increasing oil production for Americans by selling Alaska back to Russia so we can start drilling for oil there again.

Jen Psaki praised Biden’s brilliance in finding a solution that would prevent an energy crisis while also preventing new drilling on American land. She pointed out succinctly to journalists, “You see, it’s not American land anymore; it’s Russian land.”

The truth

Joe Biden needs to stop buying oil and gas from the Russian dictator, but rather than getting it from the US or Canada he’s talking to a dictator in Venezuela.

President Biden is scrambling to contain soaring oil prices, which closed at more than $123 a barrel on Monday. It speaks volumes about this Administration that it’s seeking help from Vladimir Putin’s client in Venezuela and our estranged Saudi allies rather than U.S. shale […]

Tuesday Open Thread

9.1 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

Petition to stop the Vax Mandates

All anybody wants is free choice about what they get injected with. Two days to go. Send it to your friends.

Let the Nurses, Doctors, Truck Drivers, Teachers and everyone who wants to work or travel be free to choose.

Australian Parliament Petition EN3886 – Cessation of vaccine mandates 9.5 out of 10 based on 65 ratings […]

Two weeks of War undoes thirty years of energy propaganda: Everyone wants fossil fuels

It’s the Great Reset in Global Energy complacency

There is pandemonium on the markets and suddenly many nations want to be energy sufficient. It’s perhaps not The Great Reset than the collective-types were expecting?

The gas flows from Russia to the EU are sporadically tightening, and the Yamal-Europe line has been cut off. Gas in Europe is now trading at €340/MWh which is fully 22 times the long term average. Newcastle coal normally trades around $60 per ton, but now is over $400 USD.

A few days ago the former head of MI6 in the UK called for an immediate lifting of the frakking ban which was set to see concrete poured down the only two shale gas wells in England by March 15th. Thirty-five Tory MPs and four peers sent a letter to Boris demanding the same thing. Now even Boris Johnson is suggesting the Green targets could be relaxed, not just for Britain, but for all the West. He went so far as to suggest The West could give itself a “climate change pass” while we figure out how to get energy that isn’t Russian gas.

Thanks to NetZeroWatch

So much for the end of Fossil […]